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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Fanaelialae" data-source="post: 4724341" data-attributes="member: 53980">In all fairness, I did say "love it or hate it".Compatibility with previously established (3.x) campaign settings is backwards compatibility.  Or perhaps I am misunderstanding you?In all likelihood, the druid will get more options with the Primal Power book.  Two "primary builds" is a standard initial setup for a class in 4E when it debuts, with more added in later sourcebooks.  It's possible that some of the powers will be healing abilities.  Nonetheless, the role of controller was chosen for Druids (which I consider rather fitting based on how I've seen the majority of druids played over the years) so that will be their primary focus in 4E.  If I had to guess why druids weren't given some equivalent of Lay on Hands, it's because LoH is actually an effective defender tool for the Paladin.  Using it upon himself allows him to soak up more damage (an inherent aspect of his role).  Alternately, he can use it to cancel attacks from enemies who get past him (similar to what the Shielding Swordmage does).  Adding healing to a Paladin contributes to his "defender-yness".  I'm hard-pressed to see how adding more healing to a Druid would contribute to it's "controller-yness", hence why I suspect that their healing is downplayed to the extent that it is.As someone else already pointed out, rangers could cast spells in previous editions but can't anymore.  Fighters can't spam trip endlessly.  High level mages can't rewrite history with a single spell (Wish).  Rogues can't use wands (UMD).  Druids have limited and sporadic healing abilities (at least for now).  Things have changed between editions, and IMO druid healing is the least of these.Keep in mind that in 4E, healing is no longer virtually necessary for a group to be successful because everyone has Second Wind, a successful Heal check can trigger another character's Second Wind, and PCs can also heal themselves to full outside of combat.If you want to add healing back to the druid (assuming, as seems to be the case, that you don't care to have "healer druids" multiclass into bard, cleric or warlord) I would recommend looking at the healing utility abilities of of one of the leader classes and then weakening the powers and/or deferring them to a later utility level.  Since you seem to like Fires of Life, you could also create higher level versions of that power to fill in any perceived "healing gaps".I'm not all that certain that the Primal Conversion power would work that well.  It gives druids the option to convert their controller dailies into a leader-type power for starters, which seems to me a crappy choice to have to make (I can use this super-cool ability that only my class can do and exemplifies my role, or give the ranger regeneration for this encounter...).  Keep in mind that regeneration is somewhat limited in 4E since it no longer functions at 0 hp or below (making it useless for saving a dying companion).  Also, while it is given very gradually (I have no experience thus far with PC regeneration in 4E, so I can't say how much would be too much or too little) even the basic numbers seem to be an enormous amount of healing over time (50 hp at heroic, 100 at paragon, and 150 at epic), without the expenditure of healing surges on anyone's part.  Most PC regeneration abilities that I can recall only work while bloodied though, so that might be a good place to start if your heart is set on druids as regenerative healers.</blockquote>

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